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Media Share - Mediatomb Is Now Working

Great news for the Linux and Mac folks! Mediatomb is now working for photos, music, and video. Transcoding works great! Right now, the working code for the HR20 is not released and must be compiled from SVN. There is detailed documentation on how to do this. I am hoping to get some people to test it out and get the feedback back to the developer, who is willing to work with us (unlike Twonky)

Do not download version 0.11.0 as it doesn't work with the HR20. You must compile from the latest SVN. Also, Mediatomb cannot be compiled for Windows. The developer has stated that this may happen in the future. This is definitely beta code right now and it will take some patience and time to get it built and configured. Also, if you are running Ubuntu Linux, it is highly recommended to compile a new ffmpeg because the version Ubuntu provides does not have support for h264 video or aac audio.

I would like to thank Master63a (I do not know his username here on DBSTalk) and Jin, the Mediatomb developer for all of the work that has been done to get Mediatomb working with the HR2x.

Audio
- mp3, wma, ogg, flac, m4a, and aac (non DRM) transcoded to wav (audio/wav). wav plays with no transcoding.
- there is a bug which causes slow playback (developer knows about it). Workaround is to play audio from another server after HR2x reset, then mediatomb will play audio OK.FIXED

Video
- mpeg4(divx, xvid) and wmv transcoded to mpeg2
- video letterboxed (either top/bottom or right/left) to 16:9 ratio. No annoying stretching!
- flv (flash video) to mpeg2
- success transcoding x264 HD (720p and 1080p quicktime trailers, transcoded to mpeg2-ts, 6000kbps CBR, AC3 audio)
- mkv with ac3 soundtrack transcodes fine, dts soundtrack out of sync. Transcoded to mpeg2-ts, 6000kbps CBR, AC3 audio.
- HD content streamed to the HR2x and played at 1920x1080 or 1280x720
- Current transcode script converts audio to AC3 (only if source is not AC3) and muxes video and audio into an MPEG-2 transport stream
Online Content
- Online radio working!
- Online Video (YouTube) - now working! You select search parameters in the config file and MediaTomb pulls video links from YouTube. The title of the videos are in the Media Share menu and the video plays about as good as can be expected for a 320x240 resolution. I have created transcoding scripts (flv to mpeg2) for both ffmpeg and VLC.

- All transcoding is completely configurable from the command line and shell scripts!
- Menus are also configurable, but you need some javascript knowledge.
- Web page interface to configure shares

What is the transcode target for video - program stream or transport stream - and can you control the video/audio targets separately ? Basically my question is around getting vob material to transport stream and preserving the AC3 audio in the process.

What is the transcode target for video - program stream or transport stream - and can you control the video/audio targets separately ? Basically my question is around getting vob material to transport stream and preserving the AC3 audio in the process.

And the one million dollar question : AVTransport (RWD, FFWD) ?

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Since you have control of the ffmpeg command line, you could choose either ps (-f dvd) or ts (-f mpegts). The video and audio are controlled independently and you can change any parameter you wish. To preserve the audio stream in ffmpeg, just specify -acodec copy. You can also use VLC (or any other program) if you wish.

Unfortunately, no AV Transport We may need someone to learn the inner working of the ViiV software to get this working...

I have a 9 year old PC with 384M RAM on puppy linux where I have stored many videos..Can I use this to run MediaTomb? Do you know how powerful the PC has to be where I run this?

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Audio transcoding shouldn't be a problem, but video may be an issue. You pretty much have to transcode "on the fly" at 30 fps for it to work. If your videos are already mpeg2, no transcoding may be necessary and you should be OK. You can always try, especially since mediatomb is free

Hello, I used to have more time before to tinker with..but I would really appreciate if you gave specific links to download .tar.gz files etc, as well as detailed instructions for how to get this to work....

Hello, I used to have more time before to tinker with..but I would really appreciate if you gave specific links to download .tar.gz files etc, as well as detailed instructions for how to get this to work....

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The links are on the first post of this thread. Unfortunately, right now there is no quick and easy way to install and set up mediatomb and there won't be until the developer releases the next version. The current released version (0.11.0) will not work with the HR20. The only way to get it working now is to download the source code from SVN (instructions are in the mediatomb documentation on their website), make sure all dependencies are installed on your system, and build the binary. When the next version is officially released, the developer will have pre-compiled binaries for the major distros.

- the slow audio playback speed issue has been fixed.
- online audio streams are now working.
- I posted a new link to the MediaTomb wiki with the transcoding settings and scripts on the first post in this thread.

Also, right now, I am running this in a virtual machine running Ubuntu Hardy on my Vista box (using VMWare). So Windows users can play as well

I was trying to get it to compile yesterday..am stuck at getting the various packages ( sqllite)

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It took me awhile to get all of the dependancies installed. Which OS are you using? In Ubuntu Hardy, the sqlite package is sqlite and libsqlite0 (make sure you get the libraries for everything as well).

Try to use sqlite instead of mysql. Mediatomb automatically sets everything up for you with sqlite.

I've actually been messing with it on and off on Ubuntu Hardy. It's good to know that I'll need to build from latest svn commits to get things working. My HR20 is able to see the 0.11.0 version but it won't play any movies.

I'm sure I'll feel motivated at some point this week to pull down the source and upgrade. Thanks for the info!

Update: YouTube video now transcoded and streamed to the HR2x The search criteria are selectable from the configuration file and the YouTube video titles are displayed on the Media Share menu. You also control the refresh time to update the video list.

Also, it appears SopCast support is planned as well. I saw it referenced when building the most recent SVN build. This is free P2P internet TV.

Congratulations! I hadn't been able to compile MediaTomb for several weeks -- problems with a supporting library -- but I just made a more determined effort, and finally got through it. It didn't work real great, but it did work. Photos are shown as thumbnails, and mp3s are played at the wrong speed. I haven't had a chance to test videos yet.